Brightness Controls Utility (works with Latest AMD Drivers)

Hey guys,

So, I've been on the hunt for a nice utility that would allow me to use my brightness keys to control the screen brightness since upgrading graphics with AMD released drivers breaks the keys. Well, I searched and searched and I could not find anything that was complete or remotely fast. So, I made my own using AutoHotkey, a little C# program, and a nice debugging utility. The end result is this "Brightness Controls.exe".

This utility controls the screen backlight and does not touch the image brightness controls. Hence, it is a true screen brightness controller. Currently, as far as I know it only works on Windows 7 x64.


http://www.mediafire.com/?kk3xqt4uh...653q3bbwhbbk3,cb5dzow1zzsa2xw,tithd6h8ahomde7

You will need the three executable files. They will have to be placed in the same directory. Also, it would be best to place the files somewhere outside the Program Files directory so that you do not get UAC prompts. The programs do not need UAC. "Brightness Control.exe" is the main program and is what runs the other programs. Upon first execution, it will poll for all the possible brightness levels and store them in a text file. Upon first execution on every bootup, it will read the text file into memory. The text file is what controls the brightness increments. Hence, you could edit the text file and change the levels to something else. Note that the levels you manually specify must have originally been in the text file since they are what your screen supports.

Currently, the following keys are hard coded:

F2 : screen brightness down one level

F3 : screen brightness up one level

F5 : turns off the screen including all connected displays


If you are good with C# and know how to combine AHK with C#, please private message me. I would like to expand this utility. The source code for the C# part of the utility is freely available.

All the code put up here is the result of the effort put forth by me (trying to get rid of text files and improve speed) and others (who really did a lot of the ground work and showed me it was possible and well, now it's time to improve it from here on).

Sources and other helpful links for this:

Original idea for this: http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic42443-15.html
The backbone of it all: http://edgylogic.com/projects/display-brightness-vista-gadget/

Some ways to perhaps improve upon this:
http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3687
http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/topic16823.html
http://www.autohotkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26191

 

Please let me know if this actually works for you. It works for me on my Envy 17-2090nr, so I thought it might work for others too. Also, my first time using mediafire to host, so I'm not sure if I set that up correctly.

Currently trying to figure out how to get the scan codes for the special keys or if I can't do that, then I'll probably create a replacement keyboard driver that'll give the special keys their own scan codes.

 

I'm nowhere near your league technically, nor do I presently own any current AMD gpu machines, but I've always been curious about registry, BIOS or gpu software hacks to push backlight brightness on a variety of Windows laptops I own (primarily HPs). My Sony Z13 is the only one that I've found had the capacity to increase backlighting - by some 40%, entirely safely - using this registry hack. I have a number of LED backlit laptops that could use a boost in brightness beyond what the stock controls permit. Any general thoughts on where other mfrs might hide these tweaks?

Ever wonder what Apple owners are doing while the rest of us are searching for ways to get our hardware to perform better than its stock specs?

 

It really depends on how the LCD backlight controller is connected to the motherboard. For some laptops, the max backlight level is hardware limited. On some, it is a software limit. If it is a software limit, then you'll have to figure out where the software is storing its list of possible backlight levels and change that list.